The Epigenetic Role In Pharmacological Action Discussion

The Epigenetic Role In Pharmacological Action Discussion

Psychopharmacological agents are stimulants that help patients ease chronic pain, including anxiolytics, antidepressants, psychostimulants, and antipsychotics. Such insight is essential since it helps understand the agonist, partial, and antagonist drugs. According to Gicquelais et al. (2020), an agonist is a drug that mimics the signal ligand action by binding to a receptor and activating it, thus enabling the full drug effect. For the antagonist, it refers to those drugs that bind to receptors without activating them, though it blocks the agonist’s ability to activate the receptors. On the other hand, partial antagonist refers to those drugs that binds and activate specific receptors like the agonist but the receptor activation degree is lower thus failing to induce maximal receptor population maximal activation. When focusing on opioids, agonist classification is an example of Heroin, partial agonist including drugs like Buprenorphine while antagonist being Naloxone (Gicquelais et al., 2020)The Epigenetic Role In Pharmacological Action Discussion. Hence, when an individual develops an addiction to Heroin to an overdose level, the most effective intervention is using Naloxone, an antagonist, to prevent and reverse further Heroin binding and activation of receptors. However, the partial agonist nature of Buprenorphine can help in reducing drug cravings due to its partial binding to such opioid receptors.

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Question Two: Ion Gated Channels and G Protein-Coupled Receptors Comparison and Contrast

Ion gated channels and G protein-coupled receptors are postsynaptic receptors though they belong to two different postsynaptic families. As Lemel et al. (2021) postulate, the Ion gated channels (IGCs) belong to ionotropic receptors and exist in two functional domains where its membrane-spanning domain is associated with the ion channel formation. At the same time, the extracellular site is known for its ability to bind with the neurotransmitter. Therefore, IGCs belonging to the ionotropic receptors family work to ensure that it combines channel and transmitter-binding functions within a single molecular entity. On the other hand, the second neurotransmitter family is the metabotropic receptors or the G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) since ion transportation in a channel mainly depends on one or a variety of steps. (Lemel et al., 2021)The Epigenetic Role In Pharmacological Action Discussion. However, unlike the IGCs, the GPCRs are monomeric proteins with the extracellular domain that binds with G-protein and the neurotransmitter’s binding site. In that case, the neurotransmitter that binds with the metabotropic receptor activates G-protein, dissociating itself away from the receptors, thus affecting effector proteins like enzymes or ion channels directly.

Question Three: Epigenetic Role in Pharmacological Action

Epigenetics provides an understanding of how environment and behaviors influence genes. Unlike genetic changes, changes that occur through epigenetics are reversible, and they do not influence the DNA sequence, but they can influence how an individual’s body reads the DNA sequence (Bagot et al., 2022). That means, during medication, epigenetics may influence how a patient body reacts to the medication, including the illnesses that one may develop. That is because if a medication that works more efficiently on a particular gene finds that the gene’s function is altered, the drug’s efficacy and efficiency may also change. For instance, when individuals develop an altered dopamine receptors binding and formation, they may develop natural tolerance degree and drug addiction. That explains why even for non-addictive conditions, various drugs may be more effective for some people than others The Epigenetic Role In Pharmacological Action Discussion.

Question Four: The Information Efficiency in Medication Prescription

One important factor as nurse practitioner that one must consider concerns taking comprehensive patient’s medical records to make informed decisions on what works for the patient and what will not. Nurses must understand the pharmacological action concerning the drugs they need to administer to their patients. That is because some medications may adversely affect the patient’s condition. For instance, epigenetic factors may influence how patients respond to medication, thus ensuring that nurses provide individualized health care services (Bagot et al., 2022)The Epigenetic Role In Pharmacological Action Discussion. For instance, there is an instance where a patient in healthcare I was working in had multiple episodes of depression despite the healthcare professionals intervening in the best way they would at that time. Later, we understood that the patient had confined a history of depression in their family. The lesson gained from such an instance was that there was a need to engage immediate family members in gathering a patient’s family and medical history before engaging in any prescription process. That will help acknowledge the medications that work for other family members, thus improving medication efficacy.

Also, there will be a need to carry out genetic testing to evaluate if there is any gene alteration may have occurred. That way it will be easier to assess the functionality of Methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase and whether it can help in the production of L-Methyl-Folate (LMF) (Wan et al., 2018). That is because LMF helps in norepinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin production. Hence, if there is an impairment of Methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase functionality, the patient’s body may not be able to produce the needed LMF cofactor, thus failing to provide the patient’s body with the required neurotransmitters necessary for stable moods. Hence, nurses dealing with mental-health cases should also embrace genetic testing to diagnose their patients effectively and make an informed decision when prescribing medication The Epigenetic Role In Pharmacological Action Discussion.

References

Bagot, R. C., Labonté, B., Peña, C. J., & Nestler, E. J. (2022). Epigenetic signaling in psychiatric disorders: stress and depression. Dialogues in clinical neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.31887/DCNS.2014.16.3/rbagot

Gicquelais, R. E., Bohnert, A. S., Thomas, L., & Foxman, B. (2020). Opioid agonist and antagonist use and the gut microbiota: associations among people in addiction treatment. Scientific reports, 10(1), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-76570-9

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Lemel, L., Nieścierowicz, K., García-Fernández, M. D., Darré, L., Durroux, T., Busnelli, M., … & Moreau, C. J. (2021). The ligand-bound state of a G protein-coupled receptor stabilizes the interaction of functional cholesterol molecules. Journal of lipid research, 62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jlr.2021.100059

Wan, L., Li, Y., Zhang, Z., Sun, Z., He, Y., & Li, R. (2018). Methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase and psychiatric diseases. Translational psychiatry, 8(1), 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-018-0276-6 The Epigenetic Role In Pharmacological Action Discussion